Edging Ahead…

SUNY EDC 604: Visual Literacy: Effective Communicators and Creators

“Write a reflective blog post on how the courses to date in this program have changed your teaching for the new year.

This blog has languished since the end of the last SUNY course at ISB in May, and now I have to conclude that frankly, the two SUNY courses we completed last year have NOT changed my teaching for this year.

I’ve been asking myself why – even before this question became a course assignment. It’s not that I’m not interested in helping kids “achieve their academic potential”.  It’s not that I’ve lost sight of ISB’s mission to foster “passionate, reflective learners”. It’s not that I’ve given up on our collective goal to help develop kids into “caring, global citizens”. And it’s not that the courses, in of themselves, weren’t  engaging, informative, and fruitful in terms of raising my awareness of new tools and technologies available to me and my students.

So what is it? In a nutshell, it’s a growing sense of impending doom; a feeling that we’re being overwhelmed; and not on the technological front, although certainly it’s become increasingly difficult to keep up with the weekly round of enhancements to online database interfaces, electronic book readers, all-in-one USB devices and “i-everything”.  Instead, this fall, I am overwhelmed by the following;

• I am concerned about the resignation to the inevitable I’m seeing in  my immediate “sphere of concern”.  At the beach that I could once keep reasonably clean by picking up two bags of trash each visit, I now find four to be the norm.  In my small off-campus housing development, rats have become new and unwelcome residents and I feel alone in fighting their encroachment.  I’ve given up trying to maintain on my own a small public park space at the entrance, and it has now become a rampant, weed-choked jungle.
• I am dismayed by the escalation of disregard I am seeing for the larger local environment. I live 20 minutes from this tiny western school enclave, and in my daily commute (by SUV!), I see streets becoming ever more congested and garbage-strewn, roadsides becoming defacto waste-dumps, and once pristine rice-paddies being paved over with first a meter of household garbage (pix to prove it), then a meter of fertile topsoil that should be growing a crop, and finally, two stories of glass and concrete that I fear will become Thailand’s Love Canal.
• I am staggered by the sheer global scale of irreparable damage to the environment I see perpetrated in support  of “business as usual” . We need to maintain “BAU” to support our insatiable demand for superfluous consumer products, unnecessary technology-laden “infomedia” capabilities  and an inappropriat global jet-setting lifestyle. A recent report by the BC Forest Service in Canada projects by within 10 years, the Pine-Beetle infestation will have destroyed 71% of all extant BC Pine Forests. That will bring about shocking changes in the appearance, climate and economic viability of Canada’s richest province.
• I am appalled at the scope of change sweeping the planet as a result of the above, from the speed of arctic sea-ice melt (a trend that’s, thankfully reversed slightly in 2009)  to the routine collapse of Antarctic ice-shelves, to the inexorable upward creep of atmospheric CO2.

Read James Howard Kunstler’s “The Long Emergency” (this link to the Rolling Stone article, but we have two copies of the book in ML) and consider how prescient he seems now to have been so far. Read his new novel “World Made by Hand” and consider what’s going to be important if his vision of America in 20 years turns out to be even partly true.

Then ask yourself, “How can I best help students achieve to their academic potential, become passionate learners, and prepare them to be caring, global citizens in a world which might not have functioning electricity or adequate freshwater – even at their soci0-economic level?”

Should I continue to obsess about flavor-of-the-week technological wizardry, or should I concentrate on rubber-meets-road learning skills that will transcend “the long emergency”,  when being able to learn, from a technology not dependent on electricity, how to purify unsafe drinking water, will be a skill more prized than knowing how to assemble a cloud-based mashup of irrelevant extrivianza?

I haven’t changed much about how I’m teaching this fall – except the time-frame within which I’m placing it.  I’m trying to keep my finger on the pulse of new technologies for information seeking and learning, but I’m concentrating on personal connections, practical learnings and transferrable skills that I can impart regarding the already rich array of tools available to our students.

This places me squarely in the left-hand column of Greg Craven’s Magic Grid Machine if you were to exchange his “Significant action now” and “Little or No action”  to combat climate change with “Hedge your bets with traditional vs. technological learning tools” and “Put all your eggs in the technology basket”.

Whether global warming is going to lead to uncontrolled and irreversible climate change is still, unfortunately, a matter of debate (albeit mostly from “outlier” opinion-leaders).  But using Craven’s irrefutable logic, I’ll fight to preserve the best of the past while critically examining, and implementing where it proves really useful,  technology’s promise for the future.  We’ve already made huge changes in the way we do business in our Main Library from 5 years ago.  This year we’ll concentrate on fine-tuning those rather than introducing a host of yet newer experiments in learning.

…we would not be discussing what kids can’t do in our library.

TechUseAgreement

We’d be talking about how to facilitate, among other web2.0 strategies, student exploration of the following emerging trends;

• Gaming – World of Warcraft broke the 10,000,000 user mark – a year ago. Kids ARE gaming!
• Virtual Worlds –Virtual worlds like Second Life may soon become pervasive. An AUP should  acknowledge this.
• S/W Downloads – we need better guidelines for downloading – what, when, how, to where?
• Streaming Media – better guidelines on use (when, where, how – e.g. using headphones, etc)
• Cloud computing and the Symantic Web (related to the above, but broader in scope as everything begins to reside on the “cloud” and as “smart objects” become ubiguitous) – the Horizon Report, 2009

Unfortunately, it’s not a perfect world. In the first place, all of the above require access to bandwidth that we just do not have at this time in Thailand. Even in the US, a Neilsen News report on April 13 that Streaming video had increased by 40% in one year was followed shortly by news of bandwidth caps by big internet providers. “Capping”, is, of course, a relative term. 250 GB of data/month (equivalent of 120 full-length movies or 65,000 songs) seems a lot in an environment where real download speeds are measured in 2-digit KILOBYTES/second rather the the 1-2 megabytes/second Thai home users typically pay for.

Even at our school, where we have something like 40 megabytes/second, it still often takes several seconds for a static page to stream in, and streaming video is often broken up with pauses for buffering.  Allowing students to explore the new technologies with no limits is simply not a practical option at this time.

And then there’s the issue of teen decision-making skills.  We greet around 1200 visitors in a typical day in our main library, and 50-60% of these borrow a wireless laptop for use during their visit. We have 150 chairs in 7 discrete seating areas dispersed over 700 square meters on two floors. Realistically, we simply are not aware of what most students do with the computers most of the time. In this environment, and in consideration of others rights to a “quiet, productive workplace” environment, we feel it incumbent on us to provide guidance in what uses of the area, and the the technology being used in it, are in keeping with this objective. A “Technology Use Agreement” that students sign off on, help us all stay on the same page regarding appropriate use.

Coming out of this course, we have a Proposed new HS Acceptable Use Policy. Since it has not yet been adopted for officila use by the school, we feel we still need a document to help us manage technology use in the Main Library.

Our final cut at a “Technology Use Agreement” for ISB’s Main LIbrary may be construed as focussing on prohibition rather than entitlement, but in our defence, we have attempted to open the doors to new and creative explorative options not available in our existing agreement. Rather than specifically prohibiting gaming, etc, for example, we suggest that students seek permission to engage in activities outside of the normal scope of online activity.

In our prohibitive rather than entitling stance, we are not alone. In the litiginous United States, AUPs can be even more rife with legal jargon and limitation. An example from DadeSchools in Florida is a case in point. This document specifically focusses on limitations and prohibitions, and regularly references School Board Policy which in each instance is a case-study in legal jargon. It, like many AUP’s still out there, could be seen as a document with a built-in self-fulfilling prophecy for failure. Few users are going to plow through the intricacies and exhortations to determine what really can and can’t be done with the tools it references.

We should count our blessings that for the moment, at least, we feel we can cover the ground in our Main LIbrary with a relatively benign, single page isb-technology-use-agreement-final-120509

Of course, the fact that we have not fundamentally changed the Use Agreement we have had in place since the adoption of wireless laptops suggests that should the environment change in the near future, we should – make that we must – revisit the question again.

Perhaps in that newly renovated “Learning Commons” we are working toward, we WILL be able to enable and promote the many creative and innovative ways in which kids could use the technology.

Amen to that…

Information Technology Acceptable Use Policy or Technology Use Agreement? What’s in a Name?

During the current SUNY Technology class, at least three groups are wrestling with ISB’s Acceptable Use Policy. Two groups are redrafting existing divisional Acceptable Use Policies to bring improved currency and relevance to documents several years old.  This project is to attempt to forge a link between the somewhat subjective wording of the AUP’s as currently in development and the very objective requirements of applying principles of “acceptable use” in a real-world environment; in this case, ISB’s Main Library.

For the purposes of this reflection, I will concentrate on the work of the HS AUP and Main LIbrary
“Technology Use Agreement” teams, since the most significant disparities between policy and behavior appear at this level. By the time they reach high school, students are better equipped to both assess their own personal actions and to rationalize this behavior.

A surprising revelation as I have considered this project is that none of the related documents (from ISB) are currently (at least prominently) available on ISB’s website or 1st-generation linked pages. A Google search for “ISB Bangkok” along with “AUP” or “Acceptable Use Policy” does not turn up a working link to a current AUP at any division level. This fact alone suggests that ISB’s core relationship to an AUP needs to be rethought. The quickest way to ISB’s existing AUP’s is through the SUNY Technology Course currently in action, where the current AUP’s are offered as attachments (scroll to the bottom).

Neither is the laptop-loan-agreement we have used for the four years since we adopted wireless laptops in our Main LIbrary available online. In my search I came across Acceptable Use Policies, Laptop Loan Agreements, and Technology Use Agreements, but none from ISB.

Once again, kudos to our very own ISB SUNY instructors Jeff Utecht and Chad Bates, for finding some of the best summarties of current thinking on AUPs, posted as resources for this course from AUP (Acceptable Use Policy) For New Web Tools by Dr. Howie DeBlasi (His keynote address from the AzTEA Conference, January 31, 2009 is worth a view)

Meanwhile, while I believe in a review of the overarching guiding principles of acceptable technology use at ISB, in our Main LIbrary, we still need a tangible, quickly reviewable but relatively comprehensive set of guidelines which we will ask student patrons to sign off on. As we review our school webpages, whatever emerges as a full-blown new AUP will  be placed at the library pages. For now, here is the proposed  “isb-technology-use-agreement-final-090509” which will likely continue to be used as the “rubber-meets-road” working document to hold students accountable for acceptable technology use in Main LIbrary.

Essential Question: Whose responsibility is it to teach students to be safe online?

It’s Everyone’s Responsibility (everyone with any connection to “21st Century Kids”, that is).

• Everyone
• Everyone teaching
• Everyone teaching kids
• Everyone teaching kids online
• Everyone teaching kids online safety
• Everyone teaching kids online
• Everyone teaching kids
• Everyone teaching
• Everyone…

(image: a “Duck and Cover” poster reproduced in Wikipedia)

Why everyone?

• Because issues of identity, security and safety touches every individual in the interconnected world that web2.0 has introduced – and we don’t come with a built-in protective shell…
• Because it’s never too early to begin teaching kids about the world they are stepping into. My 22-month old son regularly astonishes me with the depth of his understanding. Although he’s just developing the verbal language to engage in logical discourse, he intuitively recognizes good and bad behaviors and safe vs. unsafe practices. Since he’s not at school yet, it’s my job, and the job of all his caregivers, to help him develop this mindset of behaving safely in the tactile world he still inhabits, and so to prepare him to behave safely online.
• Because personal Safety, in any environment, must become a “habit of mind”, and so we should turn to any and all resources available to promote this habit.
• Because we can’t rely on “the powers that be” to do the right thing when faced with a question of the magnitude that this represents.

In a neat cycle of positive reinforcement, the web itself is a wonderful resource for tools, strategies and resources to help kids develop this overarching culture of personal safety. Some interesting and useful personal safety resources include;

• Power of Parents. A Child Safety and Awareness Program – an age-graded and personnel-specific handbook to strategies for keeping kids safe up to the point where they might be developing an online presence. Sponsored by Duracell and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
• Mecklenburg County Public School Internet Safety Curriculum for K-12.  There are likely many of these available. I’ve chosen this one simply because it’s neatly laid out in the traditional “Scope and Sequence” style that I still find easy to follow.
• iSafe K-12 Curriculum Scope 06-07 - a commercial product by i-SAFE Inc. a self-proclaimed “worldwide leader in Internet safety education. Founded in 1998 and endorsed by the U.S. Congress, i-SAFE is a non-profit foundation dedicated to protecting the online experiences of youth everywhere.”

I’m reminded, though,  that I grew up in the 1950’s, when “Duck & Cover” was the official advice from the US government to address the nuclear threat we were reminded of with every 6 pm Wednesday Emergency Alert siren test.  The “Duck and Cover” strategy was not just woefully inadequate. It was ludicrous. Even at 10, I recognized the futility of hiding my head in the sand if the big one went off where I could see it.

I wonder if exhortations to kids to protect themselves online don’t have some of the same theatre-of-the-absurd elements to them. Is there a value in promoting specific strategies to help protect one from dangers past? What about the frightening potentialities of the future? How can we let kids online at all and still protect them against the constantly evolving web of virtual entanglement?

The web, however, is a fact of life for kids in the here and now. Ignoring the already identified risks in online activity is a sure recipe for personal and societal disaster, and there are already enough coming-apocalypse scenarios to go around. And so, it seems, it’s up to Everyone, to follow the Middle Way regarding online safety for the next generation of virtual explorers.

(the 8-fold Path or Middle Way: Show Understanding in Thought, Speech and Action through Right Livelihood, Effort, Mindfulness, and Concentration)…

Reuben James Runquist, the octagenarian protagonist of my own Post-Apocalyptic “Road-book” proposes a mnemonic to keep himself on the Buddhist “Eight-fold Path” in the post-apocalyptic world he inhabits.

“Live Every Moment Carefully”

…advice as relevant in the virtual world as at the dawn of Buddhist thought…

Are we preparing students for a world of Mass Collaboration? Not very effectively, if we are talking about Mass Collaboration using emerging Web2.0 tools. Until recently, we actively discouraged kids from using even Wikipedia – arguably the first and most developed example of “Mass Collaboration” on the planet (satement made in class on April 23rd).  Arguably, because;

• Wikipedia has published statistics indicating that in October 2007 they maxed out at 175,000 contributors who have edited (in English) at least 10 times since joining.
• In March 2009, Second Life reports that the number of Residents with repeat logins users hit 732,526.
  
• In April 2008, statistics published in http://www.mmogchart.com/ showed World of WarCraft topping the MMORPG charts at 10,000,000 users, 5.5 Million of which are in Asia.

Are we preparing students for a world of Mass Collaboration? Not very effectively. We still generally;

• require written (and usualy harccopy) assignments as indicators of learning or understanding. More often than not, these assignments are assigned to and assessed by, individuals (the student expected to develop the assignment on his/her own, and the teacher “marking” it personally).
• dismiss alternative media or assessment tasks as being unmanageable or “unassessable”.
• discourage  (or prohibit) kids from playing MMORPG’s in school and virtually never enlist them in the service of learning or assessment
• read about (and perhaps tinker with individually) virtual worlds like Second Life,  but have no official presence there.
• offer kids “penpal-type” experiences with students in remote areas using the new tools, occasionally Skype in a speaker from another part of the world, and sometimes set up “global classroom” projects involving a handful of classes geographically remote from each other,  but in reality, these projects still account for single-digit percentage of the average student’s day

Do we get kids involved in truly “Mass Collaboration” activities? Not very often, if ever, at this writing? How many of our kids have edited a Wikipedia article under our guidance? How many are members of Teen Second Life with school sponsorship or support? How many are MMORPG gamers with school acknowledgement? (I sponsor a “Game” division of my library club, which has a dozen active members in a school population of 700)

How do we prepare students for a world of Mass Collaboration? Perhaps the question should be “How would we prepare students for a world of Mass Collaboration (if we were truly doing so)?”

How would we prepare students for such a world? We would;

• Rewrite Acceptable Use Policies and “device use policies” to acknowledge a vastly enhanced range of acceptable activity with both bandwith and with access devices.
• Encourage student to share with teachers their online experiences and expertises rather than to hide them because they are “against the rules”.
• Recognize and mentor student Pathfinders who would search out, pilot and evaluate emerging technologies for accessing, managing and sharing insights and for creating new learning. This would logically and functionally enhance our commitment to helping students;
  • Reach their academic, recognizable potential
  • Become experts in understanding and guiding their own learning
  • Acquire an international education that inspires understanding and enthusiasmfor world citizenship and service to others:
• Massively increase our bandwidth so that we could support whatever (appropriate) online activities kids might like to engage in. This would include;
  • Online Gaming, both of the strategy-based MMORGS, but also traditional games like Chess. Chess ladders are common on the web, and players could join ongoing tournaments at their level of expertise and learn from both experts and simply from an exponentially larger pool of players than is available in their “real” world, whereever it might be
  • a presence in Teen Second Life where our students could collaborate both literally with their classmates and virtually with global visitors
  • Exploration of other Virtual Worlds like “Teen Second Life”. Virtual worlds can eliminate national and cultural barriers, remove physical limitations (everybody can fly in Second Life) and level the playing fied regarding age, sex or experience.

How could we improve how we prepare students for Mass Collaboration?

We need to embrace the wave of change and evolution in the same way our kids do – and embrace our kids as the agents of that change as well as the beneficiaries of it.

Then Again – maybe it’s a moot point, 2012 upcoming an’ all:)…